KU faces rare possibility of cancellation

If final exams can't be given, some could be put off till January

Kansas University will announce by 6 a.m. today whether final exams will be held.

It’s possible the exams could be given on Jan. 17 – the first day of spring classes. If that happens, spring semester classes would start a day later.

In a Monday e-mail to students, faculty and staff, KU officials said they would notify the KU community by using e-mails, text messages and messages in local media and on the university’s Web site.

KU used its emergency text message system for the first time Monday as it notified students about the e-mail it had sent concerning exams.

KU spokesman Todd Cohen said finals have not been canceled since records began being kept in 1972. Cohen said professors could change their final exams to papers or take-home exams – or even cancel them.

Students in the Law School and the PharmD program will make up any missed finals on a different schedule. Gail Agrawal, dean of the School of Law, said if today’s finals are canceled, they’d be given on Friday. As it stands now, upper-level students have finals scheduled for today and only first-year students have finals scheduled Friday. If finals are canceled on Wednesday, Agrawal said those would be scheduled on Saturday.

“We have students that are graduating this December. They have to have their grades by Jan. 4 in order to be able to sit for the February bar exam,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of pushing finals back to next semester.”

The pharmacy school did not provide any information on the schedule in which its finals would be held.